Quantifying and projecting boreal mammal response to landscape change

量化和预测北方哺乳动物对景观变化的反应

• 批准号: RGPIN-2022-04061
• 负责人: Stewart, Frances
• 金额: $ 2.4万
• 依托单位: Wilfrid Laurier University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=745901
• 关键词: Quantifying; projecting; boreal; mammal; response

Climate-induced landscape change is restructuring ecosystems resulting in biodiversity declines reminiscent of previous extinctions. This is compounded by anthropogenic disturbance as resource extractions expand into northern regions. Yet biodiversity management, protection, and conservation does not include anticipated future change affecting multi-species persistence. Canadian wildlife represent important nutritional, cultural, and symbolic sources for northern people and global conservation. These animals inhabit an ecosystem where polar amplification is increasing the frequency and severity of drought, forest fires, and permafrost thaw resulting in large habitat shifts. Data is scarce and hard to collect given the climate, and cultural preference to use non-invasive methods, yet important to understand real-world drivers to northern biodiversity change. Quantifying processes that determine where northern animals occur, forming predictions of anticipated changes, and comparing these predictions to future observations provides the opportunity to test fundamental ecological hypotheses while servicing critical applied ecological needs. Similar work on animal ecology has been conducted in many other ecosystems, with foundational work on northern species ecology already established. However, limited niche redundancy within northern systems paired with contemporary rapid and observable landscape change provides an important opportunity to test our understanding of changing biodiversity drivers in a predictive ecology approach. My long-term research goal is to predict animal response to spatially-explicit anticipated anthropogenic and natural landscape changes within an integrated framework of ecological forecasting. This will inform current management and conservation decisions through a quantitative ability to weigh trade-offs between current and anticipated future habitat - and population - conditions. This goal will be obtained through two short-term objectives: O1 quantifying drivers of animal distribution and demographic change, and O2 demonstrating limitations and appropriate applications of these relationships when used to predict population change. Objectives will be achieved by four Plans that quantify I the efficacy of protected areas and their surrounding landscapes for mammal conservation, II density and distribution of a northern data-limited species, III anticipated shifts of mammal resource use to natural and anthropogenic landscape change, while providing projections of IV wildlife habitat use and demography considering this knowledge. This research will establish advancements and insights into the potential for animals to access, use, and respond to resources as landscapes change. It will contribute to advances in applied ecology by quantifying and predicting the effects of key management strategies to aid short and long-term provincial, territorial, Indigenous, and federal socio-economic and conservation commitments.

气候引起的景观变化正在重组生态系统，导致生物多样性下降，这让人想起以前的灭绝。随着资源开采扩展到北部地区，人为干扰加剧了这一问题。然而，生物多样性管理、保护和养护不包括影响多物种持久性的预期未来变化。加拿大野生动物是北方人和全球保护的重要营养、文化和象征性来源。这些动物生活在这样一个生态系统中，极地扩大正在增加干旱、森林火灾和永久冻土融化的频率和严重程度，导致大量栖息地转移。考虑到气候和文化偏好使用非侵入性方法，数据稀缺且难以收集，但对于了解导致北方生物多样性变化的现实世界驱动因素很重要。量化确定北方动物出现在哪里的过程，形成对预期变化的预测，并将这些预测与未来的观察相比较，提供了在满足关键的应用生态需求的同时检验基本生态假说的机会。在许多其他生态系统中也进行了类似的动物生态学工作，北方物种生态学的基础工作已经建立。然而，北方系统内有限的生态位冗余，加上当代快速和可观察到的景观变化，提供了一个重要的机会，可以用预测生态学的方法来测试我们对生物多样性变化驱动因素的理解。我的长期研究目标是在生态预测的综合框架内预测动物对空间上明确的预期的人为和自然景观变化的反应。这将通过在当前和预期的未来栖息地和种群条件之间权衡权衡的量化能力，为当前的管理和保护决策提供信息。这一目标将通过两个短期目标来实现：O1量化动物分布和人口变化的驱动因素，O2展示这些关系在用于预测种群变化时的局限性和适当的应用。目标将通过四个计划来实现：一是量化保护区及其周围景观对哺乳动物养护的效力；二是数据有限的北方物种的密度和分布；三是哺乳动物资源利用向自然和人为景观变化的预期转变；四是考虑到这一知识，对野生动物栖息地的利用和人口统计学进行预测。这项研究将对动物在景观变化时获取、使用和响应资源的潜力建立进展和洞察力。它将通过量化和预测关键管理战略的影响来促进应用生态学的进步，以帮助省、地区、土著和联邦政府做出短期和长期的社会经济和保护承诺。